Friday, December 5, 2014

Estimated total viewers reached by key weekday newscasts during the November sweeps and percentage change from last November as measured by Nielsen.

6 A.M.

WSOC

84,200

-4%

WBTV

47,700

+5%

WCNC

20,700

-27%

WCCB

11,600

+25%

WJZY

700

*

NOON

WBTV

72,000

-16%

WSOC

69,000

+2%

WCNC

15,000

+8%

6 P.M.

WSOC

135,000

+2%

WBTV

102,500

+14%

WCNC

44,400

-16%

WJZY

3,200

*

NETWORK NEWCASTS

ABC

136,300

+2%

CBS

105,400

+20%

NBC

78,300

-5%

10 P.M.

WAXN

46,900

+11%

WCCB

22,100

+3%

WJZY

7,800

-68%

11 P.M.

WSOC

82,800

-20%

WBTV

72,700

+9%

WCNC

32,500

+16%

*No comparisons available.

Mark Washburn's analysisNovember’s sweeps saw the entry of
Fox affiliate WJZY (Channel 46) into the early morning and the 6 p.m. news races
for the first time and showed how much work is left to do to become competitive
for the news operation, which has been without a full-time news director since
September when Geoff Roth returned to Fox’s Houston
station.Fox Charlotte's morning show, launched in August and the most polished of its daily
newscasts, averaged fewer than 1,000 viewers at 6 a.m. Some infomercials get
better numbers. Its 6 p.m. newscast, launched in July, attracts 1 percent of the
region’s news audience watching the four local news channels at that hour. It
has lost half the audience it had at 6 p.m. when it ran reruns of
“Two-and-a-Half Men,” though that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been profitable –
political advertisers in the pre-election cycle were buying commercials avidly
in local newscasts regardless of the ratings. More concerning to Fox is that the
Time Warner Cable News Channel attracts more viewers by nearly a third in the
hours it goes head-to-head with WJZY newscasts, and Time Warner’s penetration in
the city is only about 50 percent of households and does not go to many of the
22 counties that WJZY’s broadcast signal reaches. WJZY has been tinkering with
its formula. It de-emphasized the anchor role at first, but has now teamed
Anthony Flores with Barbara Pinson. It once
ignored routine crime, a prime staple of Charlotte TV news, and now features
it. On its 10 p.m. broadcast on Nov. 6, for example, all but two stories in the
first 12 minutes were crime or public-safety related (including one that was
billed as a “car-jacking gone wrong”).WBTV crested 100,000 in average viewers in its 6 p.m.
newscast in November, the first time I can ever remember it getting that many
without days of severe weather driving ratings.

In
the 25-54 age demographic that advertisers aim for, WSOC (Channel 9)
and sister station WAXN (Channel 64) won all the key newscasts except for noon,
when WBTV was No. 1.